Fayetteville Chemours plant still polluting water with toxic PFAS. What needs to happen now.

A recent story in The Guardian highlights a reality when it comes to Chemours: Despite significant progress in the years since we negotiated a consent order to clean up the site, more work remains.

With new testing methods and information gathered over the last five years, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality must deny the company’s proposed expansion and do more to stop the company’s PFAS pollution.

The court-approved consent order is a floor, not a ceiling. This foundation is meant to be built upon as more information and better technologies become available. Now, with new information including data described in the article in The Guardian, the Department of Environmental Quality must hold Chemours accountable.

DEQ has the legal authority to address all PFAS released by Chemours and must do so. Holding Chemours and other PFAS polluters responsible for their discharges and emissions appropriately puts the burden of PFAS contamination on polluters instead of the families and communities who live nearby and downstream.

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Risk to women and children

The need to put responsibility on polluters has never been greater: Recent North Carolina fish consumption warnings that women of childbearing age and pregnant or nursing women as well as children should avoid eating some fish from portions of the Cape Fear River underscore the urgency for the state to enforce existing laws to stop toxic PFAS pollution. The toxic PFOS levels that the state Department of Health and Human Services based its fish consumption warnings on suggest that there are more upstream pollution sources than Chemours, given that PFOS is a smaller component of the company’s releases.

Likely PFAS polluters

Yet DEQ continues to ignore several facilities with known or suspected PFAS pollution — and sometimes also toxic 1,4-dioxane pollution — that are upstream in the Cape Fear River or on other North Carolina rivers. We have repeatedly submitted comment letters to the agency identifying facilities that are likely or known PFAS polluters. In our comments, we have urged the agency to enforce existing law to stop PFAS pollution before it enters water sources, burdens nearby and downstream communities and further harms families living nearby and downstream. To date, DEQ has not taken meaningful action.

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In the Cape Fear River basin, Lear Corporation discharges into the Northeast Cape Fear River, DAK Americas discharges into the Cape Fear River, and Arclin discharges into the Haw River. Elevate Textiles discharges into the Great Pee Dee River. Colonial Pipeline discharges into the Yadkin River watershed. There are many other known sources across the state, and dozens more may be uncovered with more testing and thus addressed to prevent more harm to people and more exposures. But DEQ has not acted on known pollution sources, much less investigated potential sources.

Hold NC officials accountable

We must also continue to hold other state officials accountable as well. State legislators proposed a bill amendment in the 2023 legislative session that would have prevented DEQ from stopping toxic pollution, including from PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, at its source. The provision was later removed from the bill—but only after it was publicized, and people spoke out.

We can end toxic PFAS pollution. The consent order with Chemours shows how it is possible, but only if we build upon it. DEQ has the authority to stop PFAS and other water pollution now at its sources by enforcing existing laws and must use that authority to protect our communities and drinking water sources. The law requires that protection and the people of North Carolina deserve it.

Geoff Gisler, is program director at the Southern Environmental Law Center and negotiated the consent order on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch which in 2018 sued Chemours to stop its PFAS pollution of the Cape Fear and drinking water for more than 500,000 people.